Perr stopped performing his fancy tricks and turned to listen.
'Good,' said Essgren. 'I found you both. Humans, it seems, tend to wander.'
Gurt felt like he was chastised. Perr grunted a short laugh.
'No matter, though.' The rahken seemed to think for a moment, as though gathering his thoughts.
'A strange thing is happening...my kind have elders...and the elders call us all, now, each second for the last...day, nearly. A tone, I think, you cannot hear. It is an ancient call. One I never thought I'd hear in my life. Come, Gurt and Perr...I think your time here comes to a close...as does ours.'
Without further words, the rahken bustled from their rooms and along a hall, leaving the two warriors a choice; follow Essgren, stay, or get lost alone.
Perr shrugged at Gurt. Gurt sighed and pushed himself from his stone perch and followed the creature to whatever mystery came next.
'Curiosity's a young man's game,' said Gurt.
'Better than old men's games,' said Perr. His face, even without his armour, might as well have been steel for all the expression the man showed. And yet, often, Gurt felt as though the man joked in every word. He just didn't get the joke.
Maybe joking, too, was a young man's game. Either way, Gurt was too damn old to be worrying about things he didn't understand. He turned his suspicious gaze from Perr and concentrated on following the hustling rahken instead.
*
Caeus was under the bright skies of the Feewar land, with the smell of the sea suffusing his soul, and then he was surrounded by hard, dark rock. The rock, rough hewn, of the outer caverns of the rahken's home beneath the surface of Rythe. The artifice and skill of the rahken would become evident further in. But he needed allies, and the rahken had stood by his side once, so long ago.
He was sure they felt his approach.
Deeper within their great nation carved from the rock, the beast races came to greet him. Hand signals passed, as they did of old, before Caeus granted them the power of speech as his gift, in return for their aid. But it gladdened his heart to see the nation prosper, and keep to the old ways, still.
His keen noted two mildly bemused humans in their midst. No time to wonder now.
One rahken stood before him when he reached the central cavern. Looking up, he saw a mural upon the ceiling, and grinned despite himself, to see himself so boldly depicted in this vision of the glorious past.
'Lord of Light,' said the rahken. 'We waited. We stand ready.'
Caeus nodded and bowed his ancient head in respect to these, the oldest of his allies. 'For time immemorial, knowledge has been sought out and destroyed, hidden, subverted with lies, rediscovered again. But magic is immutable and timeless, not subject to lies. The way...have the rahken kept the way?
'We have,' said the old rahken in the rough voice of their kind, words gnarled by their throats and mouths, not evolved for speech, but a thing granted through the will of a creature than might, perhaps, even be a god. 'We abide in the lore. The truth lives in us.'
'Then I call on you,' said that god. Insane, yes, thought Caeus, but so full of the love of life...the only thing, ever, that set him apart from his brethren. Caeus' smile was warm, despite the chill below the suns and the gravity of what he asked.
'Old friends,' he said, turning to take in the might of the rahken nation...maybe not even a tenth of which stood before him in the great cavern. 'The battle is now and I cannot do it alone...'
'We stand, Lord of Light. As before, until the suns above have forgotten all.'
'Then I am gladdened. The Elethyn wait. Are your hearts at peace?'
'They are.'
'Then I will call them down and we will meet. Perhaps we will create history anew...and this time one that will stand forevermore.'
'Elethyn...brothers...enemies...' intoned Caeus there in the great hall of the rahken.
The history of their joined past, Caeus and the rahken, was bright and bold on the high ceiling above. He looked up for a moment.
The Feewar are free, now. Soon, the rahken.
Caeus knew regret, and despair, but he freed himself of the shackles of such emotions as he stood and called on his kind. As he freed himself of the darkness, he embraced the light completely.
For thousands of years, the Feewar served my geas. For longer, still, the rahken lived in my debt. No longer.
Humankind owed him nothing, and yet he had been pushing and pulling, interfering. A benevolent god full of the best of intentions...and had he ever made anything better?
Time to rectify that, he thought.
It is time this world was free of my kind...and free of me.
'The oldest place...we will meet and live or die in the old ways. Brethren, sistren of the Elethyn...I, Caeus, call you to battle!'
To words such as this, rock, distance, nor wind mattered. Words such as this cannot failed to be heard, if spoken with heart and the power of a god.
Caeus smiled and bowed his head to his most ancient allies, the rahken.
'Come, friends. It is time we were done.'
*
A shimmer in the air and dust and dirt swirling, for moments, only, then, Caeus and the entire rahken nation were gone.
Gurt blinked. One second, the cavern was full. The next, only he and Perr remained. The air smelled like fire and wet dirt.
'Good trick,' said Perr. He shrugged. 'Coming?'
'What?' said Gurt, feeling as though he'd been one step behind everyone else for the last few years. 'What?'
Perr, robed in a simple thing, his armour and weapons as useless as Gurt's, slapped Gurt on the shoulder and began to walk.
'Where are you going?' said Gurt.
Perr said nothing. Gurt followed.
'No sense in sticking here, is that it? Like...staying too long at a wedding. Or a funeral. Rather find a drink, eh?'
Perr nodded. He kept walking.
Gurt shrugged and followed after. It seemed it might be quite nice to feel the suns on his face, and a drink in his belly.
'Think they'll be any taverns left?' he said.
'Who knows?' Perr said, and Gurt realised why the man spoke so little. Because he was joking, all the time, and Perr was a man who got the greatest joke of all. Creatures like the thing that had called away the rahken? The rahken themselves, the great, the good? They didn't get it.
Perr did. And Gurt was beginning to catch up.
By and large, he figured, what you did, what you said, made no difference at all, so why worry?
Together, the two warriors headed into the tunnels, the caverns, and onward, hopefully back to the light, and, eventually, if they were lucky, a tavern and a good solid mug of something strong and wet. For some reason, even there, lost in the gloom, both men smiled a little while they walked, and the spoke barely at all.
*
Chapter Forty-Six
A castle is only as strong as its gate. Naeth was old, ancient, even. The gate was thick, heavy wood, ironwork black against the lighter wood. Fire and weight would do it, but the Draymen were not accustomed to siege warfare. They had no siege engines, no magic, no ballista. They would not think of a ram, they did not use shields to protect themselves from the arrows, raining from the battlements.
What they did have, though, was a seemingly endless supply of soldiers to throw at the walls and at the gate.
'You think they intend to breach the walls by climbing over their dead?'
Typraille spoke within his brother's minds, so that the soldiers watching the six brothers of the Order of Sard could not hear their private council.
'I think they could, though you make light, Brother. Yet I do not think they need to do so. They are not entirely reliant on brawn or numbers.' Quintal's eyes, like the rest of his brothers', were closed. His face was motionless as he knelt with them. They did not face each other, but the gate. Swords by their hands, the warriors and their priest were utterly still, unmoved, unafraid by the growing clamour at the thick, strong gate.
/> 'Your meaning?' said Typraille.
'They have magic, brother. They have not needed it to take the city. Whoever, whatever, made the rent in the sky through which they came remains behind the army. A great power is there.' Cenphalph voice, even communing with his brothers as they waited for death, was eerily calm.
'A power I have felt before,' said Drun. 'Yet while I have become weaker...this one...this one has reached the zenith. It is...something remarkable, I think, though I do not understand its nature. It is not old, like these Elethyn, nor protocrat as we have faced before. Something new...something fearsome.'
'If we assault this...thing...could we snatch victory?' Quintal's mind-voice was bereft of hope, but it was a question that needed asking.
Drun spoke, his words and his heart sad enough to move his brothers. 'No, Quintal. No. We die with honour, here. The castle, the King...these are your concerns. This new threat, it waits. It is not yours to face, brothers. This I feel...this I know.'
'Then the gates will fall?'
'Yes,' said Drun. 'Our purpose is to give our lives for the power of good. We do that here today...but I...I, too, die soon. It is the end for us.'
A sense of resignation, rather than shock, through the linked minds of the Order of Sard.
'The Order...our purpose...we are done?' Carth, the giant, who rarely spoke. He sounded neither sad nor afraid.
'We belong to this day, brothers. Friends. I will follow soon after. This new power is mine to face. The stories? The brothers we lost for whom we mourn...that is the weight behind our blows. The stories, the glory, the sacrifice...these things are ours. We die today. We die for honour and the glory of our Lord the Sun.'
As one the brothers bowed their heads.
Then, as a single soul, the paladins took up their swords. Drun alone remained kneeling in the courtyard for a moment, simple because he did not want to be seen coughing his blood on this white robes before his brothers, before the terrified men within the courtyard.
The gates trembled at the weight of the Draymen behind them. They held. Drun stood, carefully and slowly so not to strain his burbling chest, and walked, slowly still, back into the keep where he would keep what soldier he could from Madal's Gates. He was a priest, not a warrior. His strength was not in destruction or killing, but in healing and wisdom.
A moment of simple silence, then. No arrows, no pounding feet.
He knew the order would fight well, die well. He would feel his brothers' death keenly.
But not for long.
Drun closed his eyes a moment, and sent his love to his brothers as the strange, unknown magician blasted the great doors, the iron and the wood, and the iron portcullis apart with a fire hotter, even, than the heart of a volcano, hotter than a thousand fires. The stone around the blast melted, the iron in molten lumps upon the dirt, flaming wood and ash and smoke from the fire flying or drifting into the air.
The endless hordes of the Draymen pouring through the mess.
His shining, glorious brothers, stepping into the breach.
Quintal. Cenphalph. Typraille. Disper. Carth.
Peace, brothers, he thought, and went to prepare for his own death.
*
Renir, along with everyone else, stood behind the kneeling Sard and watched their strange, silent ceremony with respect.
The man Sutter, from Gern's Crest, spoke to one of his men. 'What are they doing, you think?'
Renir turned to the men and spoke quietly enough, but plenty of men heard. 'They are, I think, saying goodbye. They were born to war, born to die in battle. Today is their day.'
The man silenced at that.
The men of the Sard rose from their knees with their swords in hand and faced the gates.
'They come,' said Renir.
'For the King!' bellowed Bourninund. Renir scowled at him.
'For Sturma!' Renir shouted instead, but his words were lost as the gate erupted in fire and blew shards and molten iron into the air around them.
Deaf, confused and on his knees, Renir didn't realise the battle had begun until he saw the Sard's shining cloaks like a wall, holding the breach with steel and skill.
When his hearing, and finally his voice, came back, he stood to rush to stand with the brave paladins...and found Bear's thin, strong hand holding him back.
'Not yet,' said Bear. 'Follow my lead.'
'And let them just...die for us?'
'No. But look...they fight like they understand each movement...we would merely get in the way. Trust me. Wait.'
Renir, bowed his head. Like his...people. His friends...helpless.
*
The Order of the Sard fought with such perfection that Renir, Bear, Wen...the entire castle full of men who could see, were shocked to silence for a time. It might have been as short as ten minutes, or as long an hour. The suns above, the light itself, seemed brighter while they fought, like the suns themselves watched.
Perhaps they do, thought Renir. They are the suns' paladins, after all...and such knights as would fit the light, truly.
They were fluid, their blades lashing out, spinning and twirling but never breached. Draymen warriors broke upon their blades and their glittering armour in waves, with no more effect than the tide upon the sandy shore. Where the Draymen pushed, the Sard were waiting. When there was a lull, the Sard pushed forward. When the weight of enemies was too great to bear, their forms shifted, swirling, and somehow found a way to break the fighters. Again and again, the Draymen hacked without skill or artifice with weapons heavy or light, new steel or old, dirty iron. Maces and swords broke on sword or armour, heads and arms rolled. Blood spurted and the Draymen screamed, but through it all the paladins were silent and their cloaks clean, the purity of their spirit evident for all to see.
Men watched in awe, itching and aching to aid, to join the battle, this small thing amidst the greater one, a simple battle of five true men holding back the entire might of the largest nation on Rythe with nothing more than skill and passion.
Beauty and perfection, though in such a terrible art as war. And then one fell and the entire castle roared as his white cloak darkened with blood and mud and soot...the magic gone.
*
'Typraille, brother...' Drun's heart hurt as he heard, felt, his brother go down to the inevitable death that waited them all.
Beneath Drun's own hands a man's blood leaked, a warrior wounded the night before, only now bleeding from a stitched wound.
'Cut must have been deeper than we thought...must've broke something inside,' said Lady Geraline, a lady of the court who was bold and brave and not queasy at the sight of blood.
Drun's heart hurt from the loss of Typraille, but he had work to do yet.
Typraille's soul sighed and his power, his strength, his passion flowed back into his brothers, bolstering their own energy with his death.
'Together again, soon, brother,' said Drun, but only in his mind.
With a sad, resigned look to Lady Geraline he said, 'Open the stitches. I will try to find the deeper cut.'
'He will die...' said the Lady.
'He will if we don't,' said Drun. He only nodded, then. He feared if he argued again he would be forced to cough, and if he started, he was not so sure he could stop.
*
Carth, the largest of the Sard, that silent and stoic warrior, took a great sword through his chest, pulled the length of the blade down with him and somehow killed his attacker as he died.
Carth, Renir thought. Never even spoke to the man, he thought.
Then Wen, big and dark and glistening with sweat and soot, was beside he and Bear.
'Going to let them sacrifice themselves, Bear?' said Wen.
'Not much on glory,' said Bourninund. 'But it doesn't seem right, does it?'
'No.'
'You said...wait...' Renir spoke, but he sensed the truth. The time to wait and watch was gone. For the three remaining paladins to fight to their deaths alone would be cowardice, not sense.
'And we did. Now there is room to fight. Wasn't before. Brave men...but plenty of the bastard Draymen to go around,' said Bear. He grinned as he said it. Didn't feel much like grinning, truth be told, but no sense in pissing yourself in fear at the start of a battle. Time for that later. When he was dying.
And Bear was in no doubt. He'd die this day. Couldn't be off it.
'For the King!' bellowed the old warrior and thrust both his short swords in the air in salute.
'For the King!' echoed Wen, his great sword raised to the sky.
Men all around the courtyard took up the cry, until their shouts drowned out even the screech of steel at the gates.
'For Sturma?' said Renir. Bear laughed.
'Stop fighting it, Renir,' said the old mercenary. 'Fight them, instead!'
And with that the old man, spry enough, ran into the fray like a man eager to embrace death himself.
Wen slapped Renir on the back, rocking him forward, running toward the battle. Renir had a choice - fall to his knees from the power of Wen's slap, or just keep moving forward. He moved, and found a roar in his throat and Haertjuge in his hand.
*
Chapter Forty-Seven
The blood sang through Renir's limbs. Haertjuge was light in his fists, fast and deadly. At first he was strong and fast and fearless.
At first.
Warriors by their hundreds fell through the rent in the wall, their weight alone pushing the defenders into the courtyard where they were at an even greater disadvantage. Now they were beset not just from the front, but from the sides, too. The men of Sturma and their allies fought like demons, holding a rough wall of men whenever they could against the might of the Draymen.
But the warriors of the plains seemed to be solely intent on killing Renir, and Renir alone. It was quite disconcerting. Warriors would fall to stray thrusts from Sturmen, or the remaining Sard, or the mercenaries, ignoring other threats in a hunger to take Renir's head.
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